the Granger movements were appeals to government to prevent what the
pioneer thought to be invasions of pioneer democracy.

As the western settler began to face the problem of magnitude in the
areas he was occupying; as he began to adjust his life to the modern
forces of capital and to complex productive processes; as he began to
see that, go where he would, the question of credit and currency, of
transportation and distribution in general conditioned his success, he
sought relief by legislation. He began to lose his primitive attitude
of individualism, government began to look less like a necessary evil
and more like an instrument for the perpetuation of his democratic
ideals. In brief, the defenses of the pioneer democrat began to shift,
from free land to legislation, from the ideal of individualism to the
ideal of social control through regulation by law. He had no sympathy
with a radical reconstruction of society by the revolution of socialism;
even his alliances with the movement of organized labor, which
paralleled that of organized capital in the East, were only
half-hearted. But he was becoming alarmed over the future of the free
democratic ideal. The wisdom of his legislation it is not necessary to
discuss here. The essential point is that his conception of the right of
government to control social process had undergone a change. He was
coming to regard legislation as an instrument of social construction.
The individualism of the Kentucky pioneer of 1796 was giving way to the
Populism of the Kansas pioneer of 1896.

The later days of pioneer democracy are too familiar to require much
exposition. But they are profoundly significant. As the pioneer doctrine
of free competition for the resources of the nation revealed its
tendencies; as individual, corporation and trust, like the pioneer,
turned increasingly to legal devices to promote their contrasting
ideals, the natural resources were falling into private possession.
Tides of alien immigrants were surging into the country to replace the
old American stock in the labor market, to lower the standard of living
and to increase the pressure of population upon the land. These recent
foreigners have lodged almost exclusively in the dozen great centers of
industrial life, and there they have accented the antagonisms between
capital and labor by the fact that the labor supply has become
increasingly foreign born, and recruited from nationalities who arouse
no sympathy